


The Raven

by phoenix_writing



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-21
Updated: 2019-12-21
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:01:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21878551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phoenix_writing/pseuds/phoenix_writing
Summary: One day, when Hermione Apparates home, she finds a raven on her front step.  A very intelligent raven.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 53





	The Raven

**Author's Note:**

> Set a few years post-Hogwarts. Deathly Hallows compliant with a twist, though the epilogue did not happen (or it was a dream!) Gen, unusually for me. This “small scene snippet” format is also unusual for me, but I figure it’s good for me to experiment. ;)

It was a cold, miserable day in November when Hermione Apparated home to find the raven on her front step. It let out a distinctive “caw” when it saw her. Although owls were by far and away the most common way to communicate, other birds were occasionally used.

“Well, hello, there,” Hermione greeted the large black bird. “Do you have something for me?”

The bird cawed again, arching its neck. There was no letter attached to its talons, but it definitely seemed like it was trying to tell her something. She cast a spell to check for transfigured objects—none—Animagus—nope—and magical traces—yup, but faint and unclear. Almost nothing lived in the magical world without having traces of magic upon it. It had been almost seven years since Voldemort’s defeat, and the wizarding world was working hard to recover, but there were still effects and repercussions.

Perhaps this bird had been owned by a wizard at one time.

“Are you hungry?” she asked, since that seemed the next obvious question.

The raven cawed at her loudly, and she couldn’t distinguish a chance in tone from any other noise it had made, but she took it as an affirmative. It was also staring at her a bit as though it was considering going for the squishiest bits of her, anyway.

She brought a bowl of berries and a bowl of water out to the front step, and once the bird finished, it flew away.

~*~

Somehow, she wasn’t surprised when the bird returned the next night, or the one after. Hermione had always believed in working hard for what she wanted to achieve in life, but it remained true that some of the most amazing things that had happened to her had been completely outside of her control. She could want to know and control plenty, but she’d also learnt to go with the flow and see what happened. So she spelled her kitchen window so that it admitted ravens as well as owls, and the raven began to fly straight to the kitchen. Before she knew it, it had been more than a fortnight, and Hermione looked forward to coming home to her little cottage more than she had in ages. She made tea and told the raven about her day while he consumed an array of insects, grains, and mice. (The sexing spell had come from the pet store, just like the food.) He would always thieve something off her dinner plate if he stayed long enough for her to eat, but she supposed that if he survived fine off carrion and garbage, snatching a bit of food from her plate wasn’t going to do any harm.

“Should I be worried?” she asked one evening.

The raven looked at her with one beady eye, one foot on his food like he was worried she was going to try to steal it from him when she wasn’t looking.

“‘Quoth the raven’?” she said. “This is getting to be habit.”

The raven looked at her like he was totally judging her, which was probably pretty fair given that she was making Edgar Allen Poe jokes to a raven, and went back to his food.

~*~

Hermione very carefully didn’t say anything when she made what could possibly be considered a nest and tucked it up on the top two of her bookshelves where they met in the corner of the room. She let out a breath she hadn’t even realised she was holding when the raven flew from the kitchen to the nest rather than out the window. It had been almost four years since Crookshanks had died, and Hermione hadn’t realised either how lonely she was or that she was ready for another pet.

The raven started to perch on her shoulder while she read in the evenings. He loved to hide any of her possessions that were small and shiny apparently for the sheer joy of watching her search for them; she couldn’t term his “caw, caw, caw” as anything but laughter He seemed particularly proud of hiding her Order of Merlin, First Class, moving it four different times each time she found it until she told him that maybe it would be better if he kept an eye on it after all. 

His strident cawing woke her from her nightmares before the worst of them could sink their teeth into her, that weird mash-up of real events and real fears that seemed all too real when you were sleeping. He perched on her shoulder when she moved to the armchair by the fire and used his beak to allopreen her hair.

“It’s useless,” she warned him. “It just grows like this.”

He ignored her, and the steady, rhythmic motion lulled her to sleep.

~*~

The raven started to deliver her letters so that she didn’t have to bother with post owls unless she had a large parcel or was sending something to Hogwarts because the raven always refused. When they met for lunch in London, Harry and Ron complained that he was grumpy and nipped at their fingers.

“So he has a personality,” she told them. “That’s allowed.”

“Yeah, and that’s why they call it a murder of crows!” Harry protested darkly.

“He’s a _raven_ ,” Hermione corrected promptly. “ _Corvus Corax_. Extremely intelligent.”

“Extremely grumpy,” Ron muttered, but quietly enough that Hermione could have not heard it, so she let it go.

She would much rather have an intelligent pet than one with a winning personality.

~*~

“I have to go away for a couple days,” Hermione told the raven as she stood in the kitchen with her packed bag. “I've spelled the bread box so that it will replenish every day and you’ll find food in there.”

She demonstrated how to open it, the raven’s eyes trained carefully on her actions. He liked things that resulted in food, that was for sure.

“It’ll only replenish once per day,” she warned, since she’d seen him take more food than he needed, and coming across a stash of mice carcasses was something that she’d had enough of, thank you very much.

“Be good,” she told him.

He cawed at her, eyes still on the bread box, and she shook her head, grabbed her bag, and headed out.

~*~

A week later, Hermione returned to a trashed kitchen. What looked like every single breakable object had been smashed, and the raven flew at her face, flapping and cawing, harsh and painfully loud.

She threw up an arm to protect her eyes, but although he pecked hard a couple of times, he could have done a lot more damage if he’d wanted to. Hermione was exhausted and ached all over; he could totally have gotten under her guard.

With susurrus of wings, he landed on the kitchen table. He was staring at her.

“Did you hurt yourself?” she asked.

He cawed at her, more gently now, ruffled his wings, settled.

“All right,” she said. “I'm sorry I'm late. I'll clean up in the morning.”

~*~

She started taking the raven with her when she needed to go out of town for extended jobs. The bird was definitely smart because he always heeded her warning about when they were on a job and stealing something shiny could result in all of them being cursed or worse, rather than someone just yelling and being annoyed.

It was taking longer than expected, so Bill had gotten a Portkey for Fleur to come visit, and somehow, this had turned into Ron and his girlfriend coming too, meaning it was Bill and Fleur, Ron and Izzy, Sam and Chris … and Hermione. Plus a raven. Of course this led to drinking and groping amongst couples. It was Izzy who pointed out that ravens mated for life, and Hermione was pretty sure that it was intended solely as a polite conversation gambit because it was never easy being the new girlfriend around an ex-girlfriend. Hermione couldn’t even really blame Ron for getting plastered enough to giggle and point at them both with an unsteady finger.

“You ‘n birds. I think that raven fancies you. You’re mates!”

He cackled, and the rest of the group giggled hysterically as well, because everything was funnier when you were drunk and paired off.

The raven squawked angrily, flapping his wings like he was going to launch himself at Ron, but Hermione clasped him in her hands and stroked his feathers.

“It’s all right,” she said soothingly. “He’s just drunk. You know how he gets. And I _did_ attack him with birds once. Can’t do it again. Too cliche.”

Looking irritable and making small squawks of sound that Hermione was certain were not complimentary, the raven nevertheless subsided.

~*~

Two days later, they were ambushed by the Death Eater wannabees the Auror department had been trying to capture. They were a highly trained group of wizards, overall, but only one of them was actually an auror, and they weren’t meant to be doing this sort of thing. It was the raven who called out the alarm and went for the eyes, throat, and nose when it was on the attack, which made it way harder for anyone to cast spells. They brought the group down, but Sam got a nasty cut, and Izzy was knocked unconscious. Hermione let Bill read Ron the riot act for using them as bait—“That’s not what was going on!”—since Fleur was pregnant again and Hermione was annoyed but not defending her young or anything.

The raven got incredibly agitated when he saw Draco Malfoy, though, flapping his wings and squawking and clearly upset. Hermione tucked the raven against her body and soothed him as best she could.

“It’s all right, it’s all right. He works with Ron at the Auror department. He and Ron need to take the prisoners back.”

A red-faced Ron thanked both of them for their help. “You lot are good to have in a tight spot. Remind me never to piss off a raven.”

The raven adjusted his wings and looked rather smug. Hermione stroked his head.

And that was the end of jokes about ravens and mating for life.

~*~

“Are you and that raven brewing potions together?”

They were in France working on breaking a cursed set of figurines that causes sterility and memory loss in Muggles because some wizards were jerks. Hermione was brewing a fertility potion that was meant to counteract the effects for those who had already had the misfortune of touching the objects.

She hadn’t realised Bill was watching them. The raven had just brought her the ingredient she needed. “Er. Yes?” She gestured at the bottle. “The glass is shiny.”

Bill looked skeptical. “And five minutes ago, when he cawed at you to put the lacewings in?”

“I make a fair number of potions,” she told him carefully. “Ravens are actually capable of explaining things to fellow ravens.”

Which was true but … perhaps not the point when they were brewing a potion which they had never brewed before.

Bill was still staring at her. “How long have you known?”

The raven went completely still.

Hermione sighed. “I wondered, occasionally. But Crookshanks was extremely intelligent. The raven failed the Animagus test. If he’s human, he’s never revealed it, and he’s certainly had more than enough opportunities to harm me if he wanted to do so. It’s … been getting more marked.”

He was silent for another moment. “What are you going to do about it?”

Hermione suppressed a sigh. She wasn’t sure whether she wanted to know or not, but now that she’d acknowledged it, she didn’t think she could just let it go. “Let’s start researching.”

~*~

Even with Bill helping and Hermione actively looking for a solution, it wasn’t until the raven brought them the medallion that they actually figured out how the spell—curse?—could be undone. Hermione wondered if the raven had known this the whole time, wondered why he hadn’t given her the medallion in the beginning. Had he assumed she would dismiss it as simply one of his shiny toys? Or had they discovered something that the raven would have preferred they left alone?

In the end, Hermione did the only thing that she thought was fair.

“It’s up to you,” she told him.

There was silence for a long moment, and then his beak slashed down against his feathers. Thick, rich red welled up, dripping down and then falling with a “plop” onto the raven medallion. Hermione cast the counter-curse. There was a frozen moment where nothing happened, and Hermione almost managed to convince herself that she was simply friends with an extremely intelligent bird, and then there was a flash of light so bright she had to close her eyes. There was a rushing sound, and Hermione opened her eyes.

If she’d thought this through, she clearly wouldn’t have left the raven on the table. Because it was now covered in man dressed all in black with silvery scars at his throat.

Hermione let out the breath she hadn’t realised she’d been holding. She couldn’t decide if she was more or less surprised than she should have been.

“Welcome back, Professor.”

This was going to take a lot of explaining, that was for sure.

_~*~_

_Finite Incantatem_

**Author's Note:**

> Many moons ago, I read a fic where McGonagall transformed an injured Harry into a sort of cat to protect him in the aftermath of the final battle. That was swirling around somewhere in my brain as the idea for this was born. I can't remember what it was called or who the author was to credit it better.


End file.
